Seelandschaft mit Pocahontas

The story of a spontaneous and fleeting summer romance in the Lower Saxony lake district - perhaps Arno Schmidt's most tender prose.

In the summer of 1953, Joachim, a writer and atheist, spends a few vacation days at Dümmer, a lake in Lower Saxony, with his friend Erich. When they meet Annemarie and Selma, two young secretaries, the two former war comrades try their luck. Joachim and Selma fall in love with each other. Together, they paddle on the lake and lose themselves in erotic dream worlds. Yet, Joachim's crude comments on Christianity and the Adenauer restoration repeatedly shatter the summer idyll, casting the reality of the 1950s in unrelentingly harsh light. In the end, Joachim must painfully experience how strong societal conventions can be.